By Mary-Ann Etiebet and Raj Panjabi, USA Today, September 28, 2020
Erica Garner died on Dec. 30, 2017, just four months after she gave birth to a baby boy and three years after her father Eric Garner died in the chokehold of a New York City policeman.
After having multiple heart attacks (the first came shortly after childbirth), she experienced one of the hundreds of pregnancy-related deaths that year in the United States. She died in a country where Black women are more likely to die due to complications of pregnancy and childbirth than white women, and in a country where the racial disparities in maternal health continue to grow.
These inequities in maternal health outcomes have been shaped by the persistent and pervasive effects of systemic racism.
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